First Crushes, Insomnia and Prince Charming
by AnneStan86
Summary: The first time he had met Harper Finkle was when she was six and he was barely four. And even now, he can still remember that first meeting like it happened only yesterday. Future Fic


**First Crushes, Insomnia and Prince Charming**

**Disclaimer:** All recognizable features of the following story belong to their respective parties. This author claims ownership to only the parts that her imagination has produced for the public to read without monetary gain.

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The first time he had met Harper Finkle was when she was six and he was barely four. And even now, fourteen year after the fact, he can still remember that first meeting like it had only happened the day before. He doubts any of his own family members can recollect their first memory of the girl and the fact that he can do so has given him great pride over the years.

It was an ordinary day in mid-August for the Russo clan. His older siblings were fighting over some toy that his sister refused to share. His mother had let out an annoyed sigh as she watched her favorite lamp shatter into pieces _yet again_, therefore precipitating her decision to visit an expensive spa to teach his father a lesson. He had to wonder at that age which parent was going to get the real lesson as his father had chosen that day—a day in which the air conditioning was barely doing its job in providing comfort from the hundred degree weather—to try out a new sandwich recipe involving liverwurst and grilled onions.

Those were the days that a slightly weird, slightly too quiet four-year-old boy tended to go invisible in a family containing so many overwhelmingly strong personalities. Those were the days that he could duck out of the apartment without anyone noticing that he had disappeared for a solid hour. Back before magic became the central focus of their daily lives and before everything that involved a mistake was his fault. He relished those days when immaturity was not only accepted but it was expected.

The sweltering heat on this particular day had caused the normally spacious sandwich shop that his family owned to become suffocating. While he would have normally chosen to retreat upstairs to their apartment, the sounds of his siblings arguing caused him to take pause, knowing that if they were to see him then they would force him to pick a side. With his mother gone and no one else to keep him occupied, he chose to step outside onto the sidewalk that was always teeming with people.

He stayed close to the door of the sandwich shop, knowing that taking only a few steps in either direction was strictly forbidden. Unlike his eighteen-year-old self who took after his sister and worked at breaking the rules, his four-year-old self would never do anything that could be deemed as a violation in his parents' eyes. He leaned against the wall next to the doorway and simply watched the passersby because of this, even though the smells from the hotdog cart at the end of the block were making his mouth water.

His eyes flitted around his surroundings, glancing at the various faces and reveling in the fact that his family had yet to notice him missing, when the corner of his eye was caught on a particular activity. Across the street and half a block down were a moving van, a man and a woman loaded down with boxes, and another figure that caused his attention to focus.

Dressed in a pink dress with white stockings and black shoes, the auburn-haired girl sat on the front steps of the apartment building. With a braid on each side of her head and a teddy bear in her arms, the thumb in her mouth made her seem more his age when, in reality, he guessed that she was more his sister's age. Even though that would mean she was older by at least two years if his guess was correct, he could not help his tiny feet from wandering over to where she sat.

Thus, breaking his very first rule.

As he drew closer to the girl, he silently wondered to himself if he had made a mistake. If she really was his sister's age, then did that mean she would be mean too? He had hoped to make a new friend that could be his before either of his siblings could take her away but perhaps she would rather be their friend instead of his. Would she laugh at his childish attempts like his sister's friend Gigi had and call him cute in that condescending way that meant the complete opposite?

However, as he spied the dusting of freckles underneath green eyes that were reddened and a bit too wide, he knew that he had worried for nothing. The auburn-haired girl just had one of those faces that made one automatically know they were to be trusted. "Hi," he greeted her brightly. He stuck his hand out like his mother had taught him to do when meeting new people. "My name's Max Russo. I live at the Sub Station."

Her hold on the teddy bear tightened and she looked at him like he had grown a second head but she lightly grasped his hand anyway. "It's nice to meet you, Max. I'm Harper Finkle. We just moved here."

She had a soft voice that tremble with apprehension and fear. To his young ears, he had never heard anything better. "That's cool," he said, stuffing his hands in the pocket of his shorts once they were free. "Why'd you move here?"

The girl shrugged. "We needed a change. That's what my daddy keeps saying every time I ask him. I didn't want a change."

"Is that why you were crying?"

"No. I was crying because I miss my Nana Franny."

"Oh, did she die?" Even at that age, his tendency to say things that allowed his foot to be placed in his mouth was a frequently common occurrence. And upon seeing the fresh round of tears well up in the girl's green eyes, he felt the need to kick his own butt with said foot as he ran a nervous hand through his hair. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to say that. My mom is always saying _Maxie; you need to think before you open that mouth of yours_. I even have a three second think-before-I-speak rule but I never seem to remember—"

The sound of laughter bubbling out of the small frame stopped his words cold, sending warmth shooting throughout his entire body. "They actually gave you a rule? Maybe I should try getting one of those. I tend to ramble a lot when I'm nervous and it scares people."

"You could share mine."

Her cheeks were tinged with pink as she let a small smile form on her lips, opening her mouth to answer when a woman's voice called out. "Harper, you need to go up and start unpacking your boxes. I want at least half of them done before dinner."

The smile quickly turned apologetic as she quickly jumped to her feet. "I better go before she gets mad. It was nice to meet you, Max."

She hastened up the stairs with those final words, slipping inside the apartment building and leaving Max Russo with his very first crush. However, it was a crush that proved to be fruitless and better left forgotten the very next day when Harper Finkle met the rest of the Russo clan. For when her eyes fell upon his brother, it was as though the previous day on the steps had never happened.

As the years progressed, Harper Finkle's crush on Justin Russo did as well to the point that it bordered on illegal obsession. While Max was sympathetic towards his brother on the exterior, he could not help the envy and the jealousy that simmered just below the surface. For the crush he had formed at four on the girl with the auburn braids had slowly gained strength too, only the feelings he harbored had gone unnoticed by all who were close to him.

And they went especially unnoticed by the object of his secret desire that still looked at him as her best friend's little brother.

Did it bother him that she was supposedly in love with his brother? No, because he was certain that his brother would never take the blinders from his eyes and see the young woman for the individuality that gave her beauty. Did it bother him that she seemed to forget that it was not Alex or Justin or his parents that she had first met upon arriving in the city? No, because it was his own guarded memory that he could share at the date and time of _his_ choosing. Did it bother him that she dated other guys, like Zeke and that guy from the bookstore two blocks over? Of course not, for he dated other girls and anytime she was not mooning over his idiot brother was a good time.

But for some reason, the news he had learned not twenty minutes beforehand bothered him. Oh, _hell yes_, it bothered him. Not because he had no idea in the back of his head that there was the possibility of it coming to fruition—she had put in enough effort to make it happen so she deserved it—but because of what she said after telling him the news.

Since her moving in with his family four years prior, they had formed a close bond that he sometimes believed was stronger knit than the one she had with his sister. While his siblings were both in-bed-by-eleven type of people and his parents retreated to their bedroom by nine, he was a borderline insomniac who lived on two or three hours of sleep of night.

Knowing that his mother would worry if she ever found out, he always made a good show of making his way to bed around nine but quickly escaped back to the television in the living room when the last echoes of life in the house faded. Imagine his surprise one Sunday night when he found his usual place on the couch being inhabited by the newest occupant of their house.

If it had been anyone else, he was certain anger or, at least, a slight irritability would have formed. However, upon having his eyes rest on the figure dressed in a pair of pink pajamas with her hair in two braids, he could not help but grin as the memory of their first meeting showed itself in his head. He silently took the seat beside her and reached a hand into the bowl of popcorn in her lap.

Jumping slightly, she turned wide emerald eyes in his direction and visibly relaxed when she saw that it was only he. "Did I wake you?" she whispered.

He shook his head. "Nah, I'm always up at this time. What are we watching?"

She turned her eyes back to the screen playing an old black-and-white and shrugged. "I just turned it on so I'm not quite sure yet."

They watched the characters play out their dramatization for the next hour, never breaking their attention until the credits rolled across. Standing and raising her arms over her head to stretch her tired muscles, she was unaware of the sliver of bare skin that had Max fascinated. "Well, good night," she said, leaning down and placing a brief kiss on his cheek.

That same cheek beginning to burn red, Max jumped up and blocked her exit to the basement. "Can we do this again tomorrow night? If you're still awake and want to, of course. If you fall asleep, then don't worry about it because I can just find something to watch by myself. But if—"

Her small giggle halted his words. "Do you still have that three second rule?" His mouth dropped open in astonishment, hardly believing that she remembered their first meeting when he was so completely sure she had forgotten. "I'll see you tomorrow night, same time."

With that, she slipped into the basement and he returned to his bedroom.

Their one shared night turned to two, then three and four, and soon they were spending every night together in the same place. Sometimes they watched old movies or laughed at infomercials (because at three in the morning, they tended to be quite hilarious). Other times, they did homework that he needed help on or she could not finish due to Alex's pestering. But most of the time, they talked about things that they could not talk about with other people.

So, there they were, four years older than they were that very first night shared together and sitting on that very same orange couch. Harper still resided in the basement bedroom and he was still living in that boyhood bedroom. And they were still the only two people awake at three in the morning on a Sunday night in the Russo household.

Only this time, Max was far from calm and collected.

For his best female friend, the girl he had crushed on for fourteen years told him the last thing he expected to hear. Well, the second to last thing since what came after that shocked his system more than skinny dipping in the middle of January ever could.

"Justin kissed me today," she had told him, the credits to _Casablanca_ on the television.

This had caused him to choke on his mouthful of soda and say in a slight high-pitched voice, "Justin did what?"

"He kissed me. He came by the library just as I was putting away my books since it was nearing closing time. He told me that he had been thinking about me a lot since break and he wanted to know if any of my feelings for him still lingered," she had said, fingering a loose thread from one of the buttons on her pink pajamas.

Max had gulped, finding that there was truth that news you did not want to hear could make your hands numb and tingly at the same time. "And what did you say?"

"I didn't know what to say. I was so surprised that _Justin_ was in front of me, saying those words to me that I couldn't get my mouth to actually work. I think I said something along the lines of _uh...oh...uh...yeah?_ It must have satisfied him because he proceeded to grab me by the shoulders and plant one on me," she had replied. She had let out a short laugh at the memory before turning to her body to completely face Max. "But do you know what surprised me more than that kiss?"

"He sucked?"

The same laughter that had warmed him as a child came forth from her lips again as she shook her head. "No, it was that I felt nothing. Don't get me wrong; the kiss was good, really_ good._ But there was no sparks, no oh-my-God-I'm-finally-kissing-Justin-Russo moment like I thought there should've been. It was just a kiss."

His insides had dropped and lifted simultaneously in such a short amount of time that he had wondered if it was even healthy for them to do so. He had swallowed hard, not quite wishing to get his hopes up again and have them dashed in a matter of seconds. "So, what does that mean?"

"It means that this Cinderella is still without her Prince Charming. I think Justin must've felt the lack of sparks too because when it was over, we looked at each other and busted out laughing. I told him that we should've just kissed years ago and then there never would've been the crazy stalker days. It's kind of funny when you think about how much time I wasted on a dream that never was going to be reality," she had said. Leaning over, she had given him a peck on the cheek before standing. "Well, I'm off to bed. I have class at nine."

He had class the next morning but there was no chance he was going to bed just yet with his mind still reeling. Harper Finkle had decided out her own volition that nothing more than friendship would happen between herself and his brother. Such a monumental event and she was treating it as just any other day in her life.

Was he confused? Yes. Was he relieved? Yes. Was he finally going to take the chance and make his move now that he knew her entire heart was up for grabs? Oh, _hell fucking yes_ all the way.

Scrambling off of the couch, he barely kept his pace below running as he made his way to the direction she had gone. Throwing open the basement door, causing it to bang against the wall louder than he intended, he ignored her slightly frightened squeal as he took the steps two at a time. Once his feet hit the concrete floor, he allowed for no words as he took her bewildered form into his arms and allowed his lips to land on her parted ones.

His dreams were no match for what reality entailed. As the assault on her lips continued, she quickly went from rigid to relaxed as she began to reciprocate his actions. There were sparks and the ever sought after oh-my-God-I'm-kissing-Harper-Finkle moment. And when air broke them apart, he found the refusal to let go of her body as he rested his forehead on hers.

"What was that?" she demanded, her lips swollen and reddened and making him die with the need for another taste.

"I want to be Prince Charming," he breathed.

Shock and confusion passed over her green eyes before settling on acceptance. "Okay," she said. "But can you give a girl a little warning next time?"

He chuckled at her response. "Okay, here's your warning."

And his head dipped down once again.

THE END


End file.
